Measures brought to the Cabinet on Wednesday on e-scooters – in the aftermath of a number of tragedies and serious injuries to children – stop short of a de-facto ban, but will make e-scooter more difficult to access, particularly for children.

The Government plans to raise the minimum age from 16 to 18 and make helmets and hi-vis wear mandatory. It will increase fixed-charge notices for e-scooter offences to €100 and double the first-day release/storage fee for detained e-scooters from €125 to €250.

These initial announcements of the measures – which will come into force soon – have already had some effect, with some retailers introducing stricter rules on selling e-scooters. One, Decathlon, said it would stop selling them in Ireland.

More than a third of paediatric traumatic brain injury admissions to CHI at Temple Street this year were related to e-scooters, and these admissions increased by 50 per cent in the previous 12 months, so it’s clear action was needed.

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E-scooters are, however, a sustainable mobility alternative and used by an estimated 4 per cent of adults on a regular basis.

In any debate about limiting their use, it is worth considering what modes of transport would have been used had e-scooters not been available and the climate impact of that.

International research demonstrates that many of the trips replaced by e-scooter........

© The Irish Times